Sound / performance / people
From initial idea to live performance.
Bring your performance to life, your audience closer and make every moment feel clear, intimate and immersive.
We design the sound, build the system and bring it together in your performance.
We shape sound around your story, working with artists and collectives from first ideas through rehearsal to performance.
Working with your show, setup or ideas, we plan and deliver the sound it needs for each venue.
We shape where sound is heard and how it moves, bringing your audience closer to the performance.
Experience in practice
Frantic Assembly
Hamish introduced Frantic Assembly and sound designer Carolyn Downing to TiMax as a way to move sound around the audience. He then helped realise Carolyn’s design throughout the UK tour, programming the spatial sound system and adapting its delivery to each venue—from 16-speaker spaces to 47-speaker installations.
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Nottingham, 2026
Working with BE, Wolfgang Buttress and TiMax co-founder Robin Whittaker, Hamish shaped an immersive listening experience at Nottingham’s Broadway cinema. Recordings from inside a beehive moved around the room, weaving through the live performance. Instruments were precisely placed across eight stage zones, while reverbs and echoes surrounded the audience. The team turned the staircase into a natural reverb chamber for the vocals, which Hamish placed and delayed around the room. Built-in speakers behind the cinema screen provided playback monitoring, helping the band hear the surrounding soundscape.
Edinburgh, 2021
Hamish worked on installing a 128-speaker d&b Soundscape system for an orchestral venue inside a marquee. The system was designed to evoke the acoustics of the Usher Hall, with sound delivery involving more than 90 channels of orchestral audio and two to three orchestras each night.
Edinburgh, 2025
As Head of Sound, Hamish designed and specified the venue’s sound setup and oversaw its installation and operation. Across the festival season, he mixed live music for the Edinburgh International Jazz & Blues Festival, designed and programmed sound for Captivate Theatre’s Sweeney Todd and Les Misérables, and helped get La Clique up and running.
Captivate Theatre
Hamish led sound delivery for Captivate Theatre’s Edinburgh Fringe production, bringing voices, live band and sound cues together to carry the story. His sound design connected show programming, radio microphones and in-ear monitoring with the venue’s sound system, supporting the balance between intimate dialogue, ensemble singing and the energy of the band.
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Saudi Arabia
Hamish led a 13-person team installing a 350-speaker sound system across the festival site, coordinating the crew and installation across a large outdoor environment.
Olympic and Paralympic Ceremonies
Hamish led sound at 3 Mills Studios, creating zoned systems for simultaneous rehearsals and training the volunteer sound team. He also operated ceremony rehearsal playback at Dagenham and supported broadcast recording and playback, connecting detailed preparation with the demands of large-scale live performance.
Behind the sound
Founded by Hamish Bamford
Bamford Sound brings creative sound design and practical delivery together for live performance. Based in the Scottish Borders, we work with artists, bands, composers and collectives to shape what their audiences hear and feel.
The practice draws on Hamish’s 15+ years in theatre, live music and touring. Early in his career, he worked on a show where performers moved through the audience, but the sound stayed put. The question of how sound could follow them still informs our work with sound, space and movement.
We begin by listening to the artist, the room and the intention behind the work. We value collaboration, careful preparation and clear communication, and use technology where it strengthens the performance.
A conversation first
Whether you have an initial idea, an existing show or sound setup, or a tour coming up, we can work out the next step together.
You don’t need a finished technical brief to begin.
Email Hamish Bamford
hamish@hamishbamford.info